KoreKara Podcast

On this week's episode of the KoreKara Podcast, we spoke to Steffie Harner, a cyberpunk model, software engineer, and entrepreneur based in Tokyo. We hear about how she dropped her job in the health tech industry in San Francisco to pursue her dream of moving to Japan, along with the ups and downs she faced during the journey. We also talk about her entrepreneurial endeavors as well as how the path she took to become a software engineer in Japan with no initial experience.

Steffie's Links:

► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steffieharner/?hl=en 

► Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy4DU6U7N_pYOwItvrU9YLA 

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/steffieharner

► Github: https://github.com/steffieharner

Our Links:

► Join our Discord and talk to us anytime: https://discord.gg/Cp2Fdhh 

► Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Korepoddo 

► Buy us a cup of Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/korekara 

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/korepoddo 

► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/korepoddo/ 

► Visit our Website: https://korepoddo.com/ 

► Other Platforms: https://anchor.fm/korepoddo

About Steffie:

Steffie grew up in the United States and loved consuming anime, manga, and video games growing up. It was always her childhood dream to go and live in Japan and experience the culture. However, it wasn't until she graduated from the University of San Francisco and spent a couple years working in Health Tech where she got her opportunity to do it.

In 2016, Steffie fulfilled her dream of moving to Japan and moved to Tokyo. Her ticket there was attending a language school in Tokyo where she wanted to learn Japanese and gain a working proficiency. While at the school, she found a couple jobs on the side to make ends meet, such as singing to children over the phone to help them learn English. She also began modeling with her cyberpunk aesthetic.

Afterwards, with the help of some friends she co-founded Startup Lady Japan, which is a community that supports female entrepreneurs in Tokyo and beyond. She met many female entrepreneurs who were pushing the bar in their respective fields and changing the world. But, there was one person she met in particular that would shape the next path she was about to take. That person was Yan Fan, the co-founder and CTO of the coding boot camp, Code Chrysalis.

After hearing her speak, Steffie started to get interested in the software engineering space. She started with the introductory course and soon found herself taking all of the advanced courses. She grew to love coding and software development as a whole throughout the process, despite how tough it was overall. It gave her the necessary skills to become a software engineer in Japan, and now she's embarking on a new chapter in her life in Japan.

On this week's episode of the KoreKara Podcast, we spoke to Hannah from the YouTube Channel MissHanake. Having studied Japanese for nearly 10 years, we talk to Hannah about her journey with Japan and Japanese, which included studying it at Oxford University, studying abroad at Kobe University, taking a working holiday to work at a Ski Resort in Nagano, and pursuing a Masters in Japanese as well.

In this weeks episode of the KoreKara Podcast, we chat with JapaneseGaryBen, a well-known AJATTer in the Japanese learning community. You may have seen his lengthy videos on YouTube documenting his progress learning Japanese each year, or his twitter account where he tweets daily about immersion and learning Japanese. It’s been about 3 years since he’s started learning Japanese, and in this episode we catch up with him to see where he’s at in his journey and how far he still wants to take it. We talk about his Japanese progress, acquiring pitch accent, meeting Japanese people, learning programming, and his plans to move to Japan. If you enjoyed the podcast we would really appreciate it if you could like and subscribe, as it would really motivate us to put our more content! If you want to support the podcast and get access to bonus clips and episodes with all our guests, get access to our exclusive discord channel, and get early access to our episodes please consider subscribing to us on Patreon! In the meantime go checkout JapaneseGary Ben on social media!

► Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWY6R8lFFCk724E9mN_HtGw

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/JapaneseGaryBen

JapaneseGaryBen started learning Japanese around 3 years ago, using the All Japanese All The Time method, where he tried to immerse himself with Japanese as close to 24 hours a day as possible. This included some unconventional workarounds, such as taping headphones to his ear so that he could continue to listen to Japanese as he slept. He’s made yearly update videos documenting his progress, but since he hasn’t made an update video this year, we decided to catch up with him to see how far he’s come since then.

Although JapaneseGaryBen has become considerably more comfortable in Japanese since his 2 year mark, he felt that he was still mostly doing the same things, so he decided not to make a 3 year update video. Nevertheless, he’s made a lot of progress studying pitch accent and becoming better at output. One aspect of the AJATT method is that output is not encouraged in the earlier stages, due to fear of making bad habits. Perhaps in fear of that, JapaneseGaryBen has noted that he has yet to start “outputting at full force”, but has made efforts regularly writing down thoughts in Japanese. Although having studied for 3 years, he feels that he isn’t comfortable speaking due to the fact that pitch accent is constantly on his mind, and his goal is to sound as close to a native person as possible.

On this week's episode of the KoreKara Podcast, we spoke to Johannes from the YouTube Channel Japanese Journey. Initially getting interested in Japan after practicing the martial art Aikido, Johannes has settled down in Japan working in IT (Android App Development) with YouTube in his free time. We talk to Johannes about his journey moving to Japan, progress learning Japanese, working in an IT company in Japan, as well as his family.

Johannes's (Japanese Journey) Links: 

► Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkAKAc0xu7_JgKRxumCLUBA 

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/NihonJourney 

► Website: http://japanese-journey.com/

About Johannes:

Johannes is the man behind the YouTube Channel Japanese Journey where he provides information and helpful tips about Japan through high production value videos. He initially got into Japan when he was younger while he practiced the martial art Aikido in Germany. However, it wasn't until he met his wife later on where he actually considered ever living in Japan.

In 2016, Johannes made the big move to start his life in Japan. In the beginning, he wanted to start a blog that followed his journey learning Japanese, so he created Japanese Journey - the blog. He had prior experience creating a monetized blog on Android App Development, so he thought about doing the same thing, except about Japan. He eventually made a YouTube channel under the same name, and started posting videos about Japan that could help people who were interested out.

Outside of YouTube, Johannes works full time in an IT Company where he specializes in Android App Development. Despite the long hours, Johannes manages to create high quality content, including information on how to work in Japan in the IT industry and acing the interview. Moving forward, Johannes is working even harder, squeezing out all the time he can to provide everyone with quality, relevant videos consistently. Make sure to check out the Japanese Journey YouTube channel!

In this week's podcast, we talk to Mark Kaufmann, the CEO of LingQ, a comprehensive language learning platform. Mark is also the son of the well-known polyglot Steve Kaufmann, who has his own Youtube Channel focused around language learning. Steve and Mark co-founded LingQ nearly 15 years ago, and has since then been operating as one of the biggest immersion/context based immersion learning platforms. We talk to Mark about his background growing up in Japan, becoming a professional hockey player in Japan, as well as his experience co-founding a high-tech startup focused on language learning.

In this weeks episode of the KoreKara Podcast, we chat with Kaz, the author of Eigo Nodo. You also may know him from the Kaz's Nippon Dream Youtube Channel, or the Nippon Dream Website. But today, we're going to find out more about Kaz than just the language learning side. We dive deep into how he became proficient in English, his journey to the United States, the inception of Eigo Nodo and publication process, as well as his adopted son.   

Kaz's Links: 

► Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/eigonodo 

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/eigonodo 

► Website: https://www.nippondream.com/

About Kaz:  

Kaz grew up in Hiroshima, Japan and became proficient with the English language from an early age listening to the radio. After doing his undergraduate degree in Japan, Kaz would go to the United States to get his PhD from the University of Chicago. At that point, he was very comfortable with his English speaking and comprehension level, but there was one thing that was missing. No one was listening to him.  

This issue wasn't the most apparent until he actually starting working in the United States. He noticed that everyone would listen to his international colleagues, but no one would pay attention when it was him that talked. However, his wife went and pointed out something simple but drastic that would become the cornerstone of his book, Eigo Nodo. The concept of using your throat to speak English. Due to the quiet nature of speaking Japanese, you never actually hear when native speakers breathe in. Whereas the foreigners at the company Kaz was working at would always breathe in before they spoke, which let everyone know that it was their turn to speak.  

Once Kaz actually put this concept into practice, he was able to see that everyone would listen to him, and could communicate at a much higher level than before. From there he decided that this is a problem that other Japanese people must be facing, thus he decided to make the book Eigo Nodo together with his wife. She wrote out the concepts in English while Kaz would go and translate it into Japanese. The final product was Eigo Nodo, the tool to help out Japanese speakers speak English better.   

In conjunction with publishing the book, he created the Nippon Dream website and Youtube channel to further aid Japanese people who wanted to have a very high level of English. The website evolved into not only a hub for various learning resources, but an area where Kaz would personally tutor people as well. Over time though, Kaz noticed that it wasn't only Japanese people who were interested in his content, but also foreigners who wanted to speak better Japanese. Nowadays, Kaz looks to help both Japanese native speakers and foreigners become better at the respective languages through his interactive video series, website posts, tutoring, and more!

In this episode of the KoreKara Podcast, we talk to Deni, who is a Russian Youtuber who makes videos about his progress in learning Japanese and his other hobbies. On his channel he’s talked to Steve Kaufmann and Matt Vs. Japan, and he’s known for his yearly Japanese update videos. In the podcast we hear more about his motivations behind learning Japanese, his experience traveling there, and his goals moving forward. Make sure to check out his links below! Also if you want to talk to Deni personally, check out our discord as well! Hope you guys enjoy the podcast.

In this episode of the KoreKara Podcast, we spoke to Jeff, a university professor in Japan who didn't have the most straight forward journey to becoming a professor, let alone in Japan. On top of that, he's been doing academic research on how video games can benefit students and the classroom environment. This time, we explore Jeff's unorthodox journey into how he got into actually becoming a professor in Japan, as well as his unique teaching methods utilizing video games. Nowadays, Jeff has recently created a new Arena Card Game called Alternate Souls while he's working as a professor.

If you enjoyed this podcast, we have bonus footage of Jeff talking about his time working as the global head of community relations for the TCG Force of Will on our Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/Korepoddo

Follow Jeff and Alternate Souls!

Website: http://alternate-souls.tokyo/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/956103204755308

About Jeff:

Born in New York, Jeff has had a fascination with Japan ever since he picked up an anime drawing book in a middle school book fair. From that point on, Jeff's curiosity with Japan grew further after becoming friendly with his Japanese professor and having conversations about the country itself. He knew that at some point he would go and make that trip to the country himself. Jeff got that opportunity once he was 18 and did a 2 week class in Japan. Despite being a short time, Jeff witnessed everything he ever dreamed of Japan first hand. It was a lush green paradise with numerous temples to explore. Yet at the same time, it was a clean metropolitan society with the most respectful and kind people you would ever find. All Jeff knew was that he will be back. 

That next opportunity came in university where he was ahead of the schedule in terms of required credits to graduate. So he decided to go and study abroad in Japan for 6 months this time. Although it wasn't the most normal study abroad since the Tohoku Earthquake had just happened. But, that didn't stop Jeff's passion to go there. There were the least amount of foreign exchange students at that time, but Jeff found it to be the best situation, since he could become friends with everyone regardless of their nationality. Normally, students would form cliques around nationalities, so this presented an amazing opportunity for Jeff to meet others. Despite the irregularities of this study abroad, Jeff thoroughly enjoyed himself and created a wide network of Japanese and foreign friends along the way.

However, returning to New York was a dark time for Jeff. As a recent university graduate, work was hard to come by. He was stuck in between being overqualified for lower skilled jobs and under qualified for higher skilled jobs. He was stuck working at his Dad's business while spending every minute outside work interviewing for a new job. Finally, he decided that enough was enough and decided that he wanted to do a teaching job in an Eikaiwa in Japan. 

This experience at the Eikaiwa became an extremely refreshing decision for Jeff. Despite, the difficulties of working  in Japan, he solidified his new passion in teaching and knew that it was what he wanted to pursue. From there, he got a masters degree and started teaching in America. After gaining the experience, he went back to Japan and began his career as a University Professor.

In this week's podcast, we talk to Nukemarine, someone who is not only a military veteran living in Japan for over 15 years, but also a seasoned veteran in the online language learning communities. Nuke has been an active member of many Japanese language learning forums, not only as a member but also as a moderator. Nowadays, he enjoys his retired life in Japan while teaching english in Japan on the side, and he actively helps out members of the community by providing free resources. He has his own YouTube Channel where you can follow his Japanese Language Learning Journey, as well as his own framework for learning Japanese. 

Also if you enjoyed the podcast, we have an hour of bonus footage from Nukemarine up on our Patreon! 

► Join our Discord and talk to us anytime: https://discord.gg/Cp2Fdhh

► Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Korepoddo

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/korepoddo

► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/korepoddo/

► Visit our Website: https://korepoddo.com/

We start off the podcast talking about Nuke’s experience living in Japan for the past 15 years. Nuke briefly talks about his experience with the military and his brief stint living in Africa. Although most people may experience cultural shock when coming to Japan for the first time, Nuke didn’t experience any of that and decided to live in Japan long term after meeting his now Japanese wife. 

In talking about Japanese media, Nuke talks about the influence of Anime and Japanese dramas on Japanese cultural from his perspective. Although Anime is very popular outside of Japan, it maintains a minority audience within Japan. Nuke talks about the importance that J-Drama has on cultural references and television

Going back to his experience when he first came to Japan, Nuke talks about the decision to live in Japan long term, which included the purchase of an apartment with his wife. Nuke then shares his experience dating in Japan, and the cultural differences that he felt through that process. 

Although Nuke has lived in Japan for 15 years, he wasn’t studying Japanese the entire time that he was there. There were periods of times when he only participated in online language forums and didn’t personally study, and there were times where the study method he used was not effective. 

We discuss Nuke’s participation as a moderator in these online forums, and how he naturally fits into the role due to his background with leadership within the military. We learn what the role of a moderator is and how he goes about resolving conflicts in the online forum. 

Lastly, we reflect on Nuke’s mistakes when he was learning Japanese, and he gives some wise advice to those who are currently learning Japanese. 

DISCLAIMER: This episode contains a large amount of Japanese and even some Chinese words. Make sure to watch the video on Youtube for a glossary and subtitles! https://youtu.be/gva1MN3F4oQ

About Emily:

Emily grew up in Taiwan, with her dad being Taiwanese and her mom being Japanese. She went to a Taiwanese elementary school, then a bilingual school, then finally an International School. Because of these environments growing up, she is native level at reading and writing in three different languages, which gives her a unique position of being a polyglot. She also speaks Taiwanese as well as French. 

Initially when Emily joined the International school in Taiwan, she faced difficulties getting up to par, but was able to reach a high level after 4 years in an all English environment. She ended up only applying to colleges in Japan, after finding a school that perfectly fit her unique personality. 

At Keio University, she was able to fit in and meet many interesting people, such as someone who enjoyed eating bugs, or other people that didn't care about the cultural norm within Japan. Initially, Emily joined the Volleyball Club in an effort to meet more Japanese people, but due to the difficulties she faced in fitting in and conforming, she ended up leaving the club. 

Emily shares her experiences of working part-time at Mr. Donuts, where she learned the importance of being punctual within Japanese society. She ended up being late for a couple minutes on the first day, and after being reprimanded, she ended up oversleeping for 3 hours the very next day. 

Lastly, Emily shares her future outlook on searching for a job within Japan, even though she knows that it might be a bit more difficult for her to fit into a Japanese company. She shares stories of working over-time and stories of deciding not to conform to Japanese societal pressures. 

Follow Emily on Instagram: @onopoop